JQ Adams & Fort Sumter

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What is interesting (here) is that this Federalist approach would actually be branded as pacifistic, placating, appeasing, and (ultimately) cowardly and evil, by the modern day Abolitionists like Jaffa. What is at issue over the Civil War is not the instrinsic (let alone abstract) moral worth or desirability of slavery (particularly racial modes) but rather the guiding idea behind those who attacked it, which is Equality. We are much more inclined, rather, to consent and agree to those who argue against Equality as an ontology. Men, as we find them, are highly unequal, rather than identical. Equity (in fact) demands a recognition of this lack of identical nature (which we celebrate in perverse form as "diversity"), so that it is equally unjust to subjugate a free and virtuous man, as it is to liberate a vicious scoundrel who is by nature a slave.